Monday, 6 March 2017

Freedom is good - but freedom can only be Christian (pretty much...)

Real freedom is something that happens - or more often doesn't happen - in thinking; and only in thinking. (What we do is constrained - but how we think may be free.)

Of course, much, most and in some people all thinking is automatic; merely trained or habitual - or a product not of thinking but instead of some causal factor, whether internal or external.

Free thinking is self-caused - and if your metaphysical understanding does not allow for self-causation, then you cannot be free (or, you cannot acknowledge and will deny your own freedom).

Freedom is that thinking which comes from the true self - and the true self is able to be free because it is divine - at least partly.

We are divine because we are children of God - and not fully divine because we are only very immature children of God. It follows that we are not always free - and some people are, apparently, not-at-all free - not least because they deny their freedom (as above).

(Self-caused thinking is a property of the divine; and for an individual person to be free entails that that individual person is individually divine.)

Self-acknowledged freedom is, therefore, pretty much restricted to Christians - and among Christians only to those who really believe that: 1. we are really Children of God; 2. with something of divinity in us (even in mortal earthly life); and 3. (sometimes, potentially) autonomous agents, capable of originating new, uncaused thoughts from an uncorrupted (albeit embryonic) true self.

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Note added in explanation: By 'restricted to Christians' I mean that Eastern philosophies tend to regard external reality and the self as illusions - as does scientism/ positivism/ materialism; and the pure monotheisms tend to regard the autonomous self as essentially operating in defiance of God - and indeed quite a few Christians have also seemed to adopt this assumption in practice, if not in theory. Only a (relatively) few Christians seem to give free will/ agency/ the autonomous and primarily creative self the full value (both in theory and in practice) which is in line with the fundamental requirements of Gospel teaching.